Eye on Immigration

Thursday, October 22, 2009

KEVIN Rudd is considering changes to allow authorities to take action against new Australian citizens who act in defiance of values underpinning their citizenship.

The Prime Minister said yesterday he was reflecting on the adequacy of citizenship laws after news that a Sydney man had been arrested for allegedly harassing the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

The sheik, understood to go by a variety of names, has been charged with using a postal service to "menace, harass or cause offence". He was granted conditional bail, to reappear on November 10.

Mr Rudd yesterday described the case as stomach-churning, but said he would not comment in detail because it was under investigation.

*snip*

NSW RSL president Don Rowe said if Sheik Haron were found guilty he should "not be allowed to live in Australia and enjoy the freedom which has been so valiantly fought (for) and sacrificed by our young men".

Sheik Haron allegedly wrote to Mr Rudd in February claiming that the Black Saturday bushfires that killed 173 people were retribution for Australian support of the execution in Indonesia of militants convicted of the deadly 2002 Bali nightclub bombings.

Immigration barrister John Gibson said there were grounds for the government to take action against a person if the applicant had lied in their application for permanent residence.

But he said it was "far more complex" where a person had obtained citizenship by conferral. "Once you become a citizen, for better or for worse you're a part of the country," he told The Australian.

"Once you become a citizen, for better or for worse you're a part of the country."

Australia has been throwing around citizenship like confetti for decades. Given our ridiculously lax citizenship laws, it is hardly surprising that we have miscreants like Sheik Haron now residing in our country.

Personally, I think Australia should emulate Switzerland's citizenship laws, the toughest in the Western world.

Switzerland already has the strictest naturalization rules in Europe. If you want to become Swiss you must live in the country legally for at least 12 years—and pay taxes, and have no criminal record—before you can apply for citizenship. It still does not mean that your wish will be granted, however, and the fact that you were born in Lausanne or Lugano does not make any difference. There are no “amnesties” and illegals are deported. Even if an applicant satisfies all other conditions, the local community in which he resides has the final say: it can interview the applicant and hold a public vote before naturalization is approved. If rejected he can apply again, but only after ten years.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

FORGET the "for sale" sign, the new catch-cry in Melbourne's leafy suburbs is "duoshao qian".

Victoria's top real estate agents have begun hiring Mandarin-speaking salesmen to cash in on the property boom.

Translated, "duoshao qian" means "how much"? And it's a question being asked more than ever before, The Herald Sun reports.

Leading agents say more than 30 per cent of their stock is bought by families from mainland China.

"This calendar year 34 per cent of our sales went to mainly Chinese buyers compared to 15 per cent last year. We're up 125 per cent overall," Jellis Craig director Scott Patterson said.

"Demand is so strong we've got two native speaker agents starting next week."

Some agents say the boom grew when the Federal Government eased foreign investment rules on property last year.

"There's been an incredible surge from Chinese buyers since the rules for foreign ownership of real estate were relaxed by the Government to allow foreign citizens to buy established homes worth more than $300,000," buyers' advocate Mal James said.

"You could say that's the key driver and single reason for the property boom in Victoria especially for homes in the $1 million-$4 million range and it's also the catalyst for so many Chinese buyers."

Mr James says his clients are facing competition from cashed-up Chinese buyers, especially in Kew, Canterbury and Balwyn. There is also Asian interest in Toorak, Malvern and East Malvern.

He says the Chinese are attracted by areas with quality private schools.

The Asian buying spree is pushing up prices and adding to the housing shortage.

"There's no doubt it's adding about 15 per cent to prices and creating a shortage because the buyers are not selling out of an existing home," Mr Patterson said.

This is how modern Australia, the "knowledge nation," makes a buck these days - selling its houses, along with its residency rights, to Chinese colonists err... investors.

"Chinese want residential properties here because they feel comfortable in Australia's multicultural environment and they know it has one of the world's best education systems."

So, the Chinese are not coming because they have any interest in the institutions, people, culture or traditions of Australia. No, they are coming because they want more comfort, better education services (courtesy of the Australian taxpayer), and a "multicultural environment" that allows them to surround themselves with fellow Chinese so that they never have to integrate into wider Australian society.

The Australian government, acting on behalf of its mates in the real estate industry, is effectively inviting foreign populations to move in and colonise parts of the country.

And, once again, Australians are forced to carry the costs. They have to compete with rich foreigners for housing in a country already facing a chronic housing shortage. They have to pay their taxes just so that wealthy Chinese can simply move in and make use of Australia's public services and infrastructure. They have to tolerate the creation of foreign enclaves within their cities, knowing that any objection, no matter how slight or reasonable, will result in them being labelled "xenophobic" and "racist."

This is the reality of life in modern Australia, a big piece of real estate up for sale to the highest bidder.

Monday, September 21, 2009

The following paper, published in the Winter 1997-98 issue of The Social Contract journal, was given by Mark O'Connor to the Fourth National Conference of the Federation of Ethnic Community Councils of Australia (FECCA) on December 7, 1996 in Adelaide. FECCA is a major promoter of immigration and multiculturalism in Australia.

Where Does the PC Line on Immigration Come From?

By Mark O'Connor

As a member of a group dedicated to reducing Australia's population growth, I worry that Australia over the past 15 years has had by far the world's highest per capita immigration rate. Luckily we seem to have turned a corner, and our net immigration (if you believe the lowest of the figures being put out by government sources) may now be only 50,000 a year, which is a little over one-third of our net natural increase (i.e. the excess of total births over total deaths - currently about 142,000 persons annually). [Sadly, O'Connor's optimistic observation that Australia seemed to have turned a corner has since been proven incorrect. Immigration has crept ever upwards since the late 1990s, and is now running at record high levels.] Clearly our first priority now should be to work on attitudes as to family size.

Yet immigration remains important. It sends a most negative message to the community. How can the ordinary citizen see having a small family as a contribution to the community's well-being when he or she must also watch (and pay taxes to help) the government increasing our population through immigration? Indeed the Department of Immigration has favorably cited a recommendation from the growth economist John Neville that if the birthrate falls or stays low then immigration should be increased to compensate for this.

Clearly we environmentalists must question the rather bizarre assumptions on which the immigration debate is conducted. How can it be "selfish" to resist immigration yet be enormously to our benefit to take in immigrants? How could former Prime Minister Keating simultaneously claim immigration benefits the economy yet want to charge New Zealand for dole payments to our NZ immigrants? How can it be "racist" to want to control immigration when most immigrants, especially until the last few years, have been of the same Caucasian race as the overwhelming majority of Australians? How is it that when we have rescued people whose own countries or cultures have failed them, we are so often and so complacently told by "ethnic leaders" that we are in their debt rather than they in ours?

Similar questions are asked in the United States. In October 1993 I was an invited guest at the annual conference of FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. At its final session Professor Otis Graham from the History Faculty at Santa Barbara (CA) spoke brilliantly about the internal contradictions of the USA's current official (or politically correct or PC) line on immigration. Subsequently he was asked how such self-contradictory positions had become established as dogma. He answered, "I simply don't know - I wish someone would explain it to me."

Later in the discussion I offered a rather tentative explanation in the form of a very simplified "story" of how these positions may have been reached. I wasn't very sure how complete or accurate this story (or theory) was, either as a comment on American or even on Australian history; but several of those present, including Professor Graham, pressed me to write it down and publish it. So here it is, still tentative, but a little more fleshed out.

Perhaps our "politically correct" attitudes to immigration come from particular conditions produced in the decay of 1960s and 1970s radicalism. Sociologists like Alvin Gouldner and Katharine Betts have pointed out the paradox that entire groups of the tertiary-educated, who once saw themselves as anti-establishment radicals in fierce opposition to the values of their parents, have now moved up the social system and are running bureaucracies and governments. The old "anti-establishment," these scholars imply, now runs the establishment.

This is clearer in Australia where the more left-wing of the two major parties has won the last five elections. (In the U.S., the Bush and Reagan years prevented there being quite such a conspiratorial left-wing tone to the current bureaucratic power group.) Many such people were among those who "saw the light" in the Sixties and Seventies but then in the Eighties, when they were getting a little complacent, were offered money instead - "the money or the light?" - until they eventually chose the money. They were also (again, this is more clearly true in Australia than in the U.S.) the first generation in which easy access to tertiary education became open to a meritocracy of the talented.

"[This New Class] sees itself as a meritocracy; and one gains admission to this class not by inheritance or descent but by having the appropriate skills - and the correct opinions." Gouldner and Betts1 see this new ruling class as differing from a traditional aristocracy in that it does not depend on inherited wealth. Its capital is largely intellectual capital, represented by its tertiary degrees. It sees itself as a meritocracy; and one gains admission to this class not by inheritance or descent but by having the appropriate skills - and the correct opinions. Let us accept this term "New Class" on probation, for the moment, and see what we can do with it. (Luckily this is not a matter of speculating about some poorly known and distantly observed group; it is essentially my own class I am talking about, and includes many of my own friends and former class mates. Reading this, they may well complain that I have "turned conservative," though, oddly enough, I believe that it is they who have done so.)

In Australia in the 1980s, many members of this class entered the bureaucracy and went on to earn degrees in economics, often training in the most cynical of economic rationalist schools (like that of the Australian National University). Thus, underneath the cement of avowed radicalism which binds the new ruling class together (serving as their meal ticket and union card) is sometimes a guilty conscience about having betrayed so many of their utopian and Aquarian ideals - for this was a generation whose hopes went far beyond the dull obviousness of social justice. The triumphalism of their politics often reflected the lyrics from the musical Hair "This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius" - an age of transcendent and psychedelic possibilities, of trusting the universe, and of release from constraints.

The result of this guilt can be a desperate attempt to find new grounds for difference and for moral superiority - no longer, this time, to justify revolution, but rather to maintain an establishment. Any ruling class that lasts more than a decade will feel the need to justify itself by having some ideal to which it appeals. It will invent some central legitimizing principle - usually a moral one. Thus a traditional aristocracy may place a moral value on the notion of "nobility" itself - a quality on which, by definition, it has something of a monopoly. By contrast it may see the classes it exploits as not merely "villains" but "villainous" and therefore needing to be ruled and guided. Our modern ruling class needs some similar principle to justify its free lunches and overseas travel.

They - or let me say "we" - used to be comrades in the struggle that built a better, more humane society. But what radical ideals are left when so many have been abandoned for pragmatic reasons and profit? Most utopian and Aquarian concepts of the 1970s have been quietly drowned. The psychedelic substances are only occasionally used by the successful baby boomers. Experience in running bureaucracies and governments has taught them not to be unduly idealistic about human nature. And so they have fallen back on a more basic or background ideal, one which, at least in Australia, was almost forgotten during the high point of 1970s radicalism. Yet when I went up to university in 1962 this had been the one ideal we all took for granted to treat everyone equally, regardless of race, color or creed (and some were beginning to add of gender).

Almost everyone in Australia believed in this ideal, at least in theory. So it is hardly surprising that the New Class still believe in it, at least in theory. The problem is that it is hard to claim moral superiority on grounds of such a common ideal.

The left-wing and tertiary-educated elite was now quite used to the fruits of power, yet already troubled by increasing evidence that it was just as corruptible as any previous establishment, and that it might soon lose favor with the electorate. In the resulting search for moral self-assurance and legitimacy, radical egalitarianism was the virtue it eventually focused on.

Why? It seems that the divide between left and right, liberal and conservative, is a persistent if fuzzy human tendency. It may be the characteristic mild schizophrenia of our species. And yet, most of the qualities that mark this divide between left and right "Both idealism and self-advancement combined to produce ... believers in democracy who brush aside the majority's views."are as morally neutral as those that differentiate, say, French culture from Greek culture. For example, tending to believe or disbelieve in the perfectability of human nature is not of itself a moral position; nor is the tendency to visualize oneself as a rebellious youth rather than as a controlling parent. The one quality by way of which the left can plausibly claim a specifically moral superiority is its concern with equality - its tendency to side with the underdog.

Before long some politicians and media people who were members or aspirants to this successful class were prepared to side with such underdogs as illegal immigrants, and even against the clear interests and beliefs of their own constituents and nation. Both idealism and self-advancement now combined to produce the mild paradoxes of an establishment that favors anti-establishment sentiments and styles in the arts (and often elsewhere), of believers in democracy who brush aside the majority's views, and of an elite whose claim to privileged status is based quite largely on anti-elitism.

Yet, even a decade ago it was getting harder and harder, at least in Australia, to find true racist rednecks against whom the no-longer-very-young, left-wing, educated classes could rebel - especially after those classes had been running the government and much of the media for years.

Their answer was a trick borrowed, I believe unconsciously, from the McCarthy-ites of the 1950s, and from their spiritual cousins, the Stalinists of the same era. It involves what Freudians call "projection." You project upon some real or invented victim-class your own secret guilts. If you were one of Stalin's henchmen, your secret guilt was an aspiration to privileged middle-class status in a very poor country. Down with the Kulaks! If you were someone like J. Edgar Hoover you could project upon others your own betrayals of public trust and public interest. Down with the communists!

You might then encourage the media to work up an intense obsessive concern about this evil, a concern which contains its own built-in, self-reinforcing loop. The pursuit of communist conspiracy (or in the USSR of a capitalist-revisionist conspiracy) became so omnipresent and all-encompassing that it readily discovered all the evidence it needed to sustain and even intensify its own belief.

By the 1980s, if "racists" (i.e. anti-egalitarians) had not existed it would have been necessary for the meritocracy to invent them. (In Australia, where most ethnic leaders were Europeans and thus of the same Caucasian race as the population that had invited them in, they used the term "racist" just as freely, even though the differences at issue were not racial but cultural - unless one believes in sub-racial classifications.) For some members of the New Class the term "racist" became a way to disparage anyone who believed in "inappropriate" meritocracies and elites - i.e., ones other than those by which they themselves were sustained.

Their other great trick, also consciously imitated from the McCarthy era, was that when you need to enhance your own moral position you discover a conspiracy against some widely-revered public virtue - a virtue to which you can easily lay claim. Thus, by imagining (or exaggerating) a communist conspiracy the McCarthy-ites turned their own minimal and commonplace virtue - that of allegiance to the democratic rule of law and to the legitimacy of the American state - into grounds for a claim of moral superiority, even of heroism.

How could Betts' New Class, the new ruling bureaucratic class of the 1980s and 1990s, turn their own minimal and commonplace virtue of believing in the brotherhood of man (the siblinghood of humanity) into a special virtue that justified their rule? The high immigration policy, toward which some special interest groups were pushing them, inadvertently supplied an answer.

High immigration alienated and indeed damaged the interests of the non-tertiary-educated majority, yet it did so in ways that were deniable. A media blitz, started or helped by special interest groups, soon turned high immigration into a symbol for acceptance of human rights. Once this assumption was swallowed it became clear that those who opposed high immigration - the majority of ordinary citizens - were wallowing in moral error, denying human equality, and in dire need of "guidance" from an elite. ("How satisfactory!" purrs the Mikado in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.)

Initially high immigration had little cost to the New Class. It wasn't usually their jobs the immigrant workers were after, and poverty-related crime took place mainly in suburbs far from their own. For those who had hitched their bureaucratic careers to ethnic programs or multicultural policies, high immigration was pure profit. They could preach against "selfishness" and take the moral credit to themselves, sending the bill to the ordinary citizen. Like the Unjust Steward in the New Testament parable they had found a failsafe way to buy moral credit with someone's else's money (Luke 16 2-4).

The New Class tend to be internationalists (for a mix of idealistic and business reasons) who are strongly opposed to the evergreen appeal of nationalism. Worldwide, it would seem that nation-states based on ethnicity are being formed at a faster rate than at any time since just after World War I.

Ironically, the internationalists soon found themselves in alliance with those who want to Balkanize, multiculturize or racialize the nation-state. (Remember how often multiculturalism was associated with globalization in the discussions about NAFTA?) By a further, now familiar, paradox the cry of "racism" became a trademark of both the globalist New Class and of its allies, the racialists. Some members of the New Class discovered that high immigration, like some of the extreme forms of multiculturalism, could be a way to bring down the nation-state and undercut its loyal supporters. It was twice blessed it could enhance one's status as an international high flyer and simultaneously as a noble fighter for the underdog.

The New Class globalists found themselves in effective alliance with leaders of certain immigrant groups who were practicing globalists only so long as the rhetoric of globalism could help them increase their "market share" and hence their power within the country. Some of these leaders are chauvinists who play the politics of ethnic pride in a way to resemble the Nineteenth century colonials "We do have the right to enter your country, and on our own terms, because we need it and you don't really own it; and in any case we are doing you a favor by adding an admixture of our wonderfully rich culture to your sterile, narrow and un-diverse Anglo culture."

The new politically correct line on immigration - much like the plethora of new "culturally sensitive" terms with which the ordinary citizen could hardly keep up - was one more way for the New Class to assert its leadership over the insensitive masses, on whose behalf they had shouted in the streets barely twenty years earlier.

And the fact that there was popular resistance to high immigration was reassuring to the New Class. It enabled them to ward off any nagging doubts that they might have lost their radical edge and suffered the common fate of aging into conservatism. If the New Class could not stay forever young they could at least stay forever radical. Some indeed seemed to desire even more public resistance to their ideas. Mark Ulmann recently accused one group in Australia of being "desperate for a witch to burn."

In high immigration and multiculturalism the New Class had found its difference from the bulk of society, and what seemed to many of them a legitimizing moral principle. They could deliver expansive population growth with the steadily rising property values that meant billions of dollars to some of their friends in business. They could extend contempt to all those excluded classes that had failed to advance like them through the mandatory tertiary education into the new enlightenment.

From patronizing a people's culture it can be a short step (as the history of imperialism shows) to denying their aspirations and interests. It soon became politically correct for the New Class to deny that there was such a thing as an Australian or American cultural identity, other than a multicultural one. This made it easier to deny that the American or Australian people had any exclusive right to their own country, or even that there was such a thing as a cohesive Australian or American people. If the nation does not really exist, then why should not its elected and appointed servants sell out its interests in favor of a global one?

That's the story/theory. How well does it fit the facts - in Canada? in the United States? in Australia? in New Zealand?

Notes1. ↑ Alvin Gouldner, The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class, New York, Seaburg Press, 1979.

Katharine Betts, Ideology and Immigration: Australia 1976 to 1987, Melbourne University Press, 1988; "The Environmental Movement, New Class, and Immigration Reform," Papers of the 1993 BIR Conference: The Politics of Immigration, available from the Department of Immigration, PO Box 25, Woden ACT. I am indebted to Dr. Betts for a number of insights woven into my "story."

SYDNEY, Sept 19 — As Australia's population is set to jump from its present 21.9 million to 35 million in just 40 years, experts are warning that the huge increase will pose serious challenges to the nation.

Treasurer Wayne Swan yesterday announced that Australia's population was expected to grow by 65 per cent by 2049 — “significantly higher” than the projection of 28.5 million by 2047 released two years ago.

Swan said this was largely driven by a greater number of women of child-bearing age, a higher fertility rate of 1.9 births per woman and an increased number of younger migrants.

“Along with climate change, this is the most serious challenge we face,” he said.

While the number of young and working-age people is projected to grow by 45 per cent, the senior population is also expected to double.

He said careful environmental and infrastructural planning would be required to support the boom and ageing of the workforce.

Moreover, as the country's average age grew, government spending would have to be increased, which in turn would lead to lower real gross domestic product per person, he said. “Together, these factors (pose) very substantial fiscal pressures,” he said.

Concerns about health, old-age care and pensions are also expected to grow as those aged 65 and over increase, accounting for 22 per cent of the population.

They currently make up 13 per cent, up from just 8 per cent in 1969.

Population analysts also warn that the projected increase may have unexpected social and political repercussions, especially if the number of migrants continues to be as high as it has been since the start of this decade.

Figures from the Department of Immigration show that since 2000, Australia took in an average of about 120,000 migrants each year, with the trend increasing.

Dr Dharma Arunachalam, director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University in Melbourne, said that should this rate be sustained or even increased, some Australians might find it difficult to adjust to the changing demographics.

Bill Mitchell, vice-president of the Australian Local Government Association, said the projected rise would put a strain on the basic infrastructure of the larger cities, in particular, water.

“Right now, most of the capital cities in Australia have some sort of water restriction,” he said. “So unless the various state governments can get desalination plants up and running before too long, people in those cities might not have enough water.”

He also said that state governments should start encouraging people to move to regional centres and towns to ease the burden on the capital cities. “They must ensure that health, education and law-and-order facilities must be adequately provided in the rural areas.”

But Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is upbeat about the projections.

“I think that it's great that our population's growing because so many countries around the rest of the world are shrinking and that poses a real problem in terms of having a strong tax base for the future and a strong economy and a strong nation for the future,” he was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse.

These numbers are staggering and a clear indication of how out of control immigration now is. To put it into perspective, the total projected population growth from immigration and births to natives as well as immigrants is equal to the combined populations of Ireland and Portugal.

How is Australia expected to cope - socially, environmentally and economically - with such a huge population explosion? What impact will this massive population increase have on quality-of-life issues such as urban sprawl, overcrowding, traffic congestion, overburdened infrastructure and services, housing costs, stress on the environment and natural resources such as water, loss of open spaces, and pollution?

Given that immigration will be the prime driver of this projected population explosion, it also raises disturbing questions about what kind of nation Australia will become in terms of its ethnic and cultural character. Although no one can say for sure, it is reasonable to assume that, if these projections are borne out, what is now a nation of mostly European-descended people will become a nation of mostly Asian and Third World peoples by the mid 21st century.

This means that, unless we change course, the Australia in which most citizens grew up will be swept away forever by an immigration-driven demographic tsunami. Most of the immigration that will fuel this demographic revolution will come from non-Western countries where the customs, habits, and values of the people are radically different from Australia's historic, British-derived cultural pattern. Australia will become an increasingly alien place.

"But Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is upbeat about the projections."

Kevin Rudd may be upbeat, as may big business and the multicultural lobby, but the rest of us should be weeping in despair at these shocking projections.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Transmutation of America into a tense multicultural bouquet: Can it happen to Australia?

By Frosty Wooldridge

An odd thing happened to the United States in the 21st century as it tripped into quicksand over its guilt-ridden past of discrimination toward minorities such as Native Americans, Asians, Blacks and Latinos.

What happened?

After all, the fact remains that European settlers trespassed, ravaged, and slaughtered 522 Indian tribes—their languages, cultures and ways of life. Anyone reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee or The Sand Creek Massacre cannot help but cry at the brutality committed against the aborigines of North America in the 1800s.

To see the Indian reservations today, one weeps at rampant alcoholism, domestic abuse and utter hopelessness of cultures unable to operate in the white man’s world—but totally cut away from their own traditions. It’s sad beyond belief.

Their situation may be much like present day Palestine and Israel. The Jews of Israel commandeered the Muslims’ lands around Gaza, but unlike the docile American Indians, the Muslims responded with rockets, bombs and modern weaponry. An uneasy tension and outright hatred percolates throughout the region.

Back in the USA, without a doubt, African-Americans still suffer from being ripped out of their countries in Africa while forced into slavery. They lost their languages, cultures and ways of life. Traders shredded family members at will and with malice. The white man tore them from their agrarian lives into the mechanized age.

In the case of impoverished Mexico, Latinos crossed into the USA willingly to work the fields while enduring racism on every level. Of course, they hated the ‘gringo’ equally, feeling that he stole their lands.

But in 1965, thanks to U.S. Senator Teddy Kennedy, the United States commenced changing its ethnic makeup by importing millions upon millions of immigrants from all over the third world. Under the guise of ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘diversity’, the citizens of the United States watch(ed) indolently as their own culture, language and way of life vanished(s) into the hands of a peaceful, methodical and invading armada of humanity. Within the past 20 years, over nine million Middle Eastern Muslims now make the United States their home. They expect to grow to 20 million in a few decades.

Unlike the American Indians that maintained small populations, Latinos, by 2042 will become the new majority within the United States—totally displacing the white man’s culture and language within a 60 year period. As an ethnic group, they do not tolerate blacks or whites, and it will be interesting to see how they abide with Muslims.

America immigrated itself out of its identity and into a multicultural and diversity predicament. As President Teddy Roosevelt said, “The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, or preventing it from continuing as a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.”

All the while, everything in America changes beyond its own understanding—much like what happened to the American Indians. Upon his final capture, Warrior Chief Geronimo said, “I think we have lost our way of life forever.”

America spirals into the same dilemma on a gargantuan scale. In the past 40 years, the United States revoked its laws, its culture, its language and its Constitution in order to accommodate outcries from minorities, dispossessed and foreign religions.

In the 60s, Lyndon Baines Johnson offered billions to bring the poor into the Great Society. Tax dollars paid for college tuition for minorities. Every child passed to the next grade whether they accomplished the work or not. As a teacher, I saw ‘affirmative action grading’ allow children who wouldn’t do their work—passed to the next grade. Later, ‘affirmative action jobs’ and ‘quotas’ based on color rather than standards became the norm for workers and students.

But today, Black Americans suffer terrific unemployment, illiteracy and broken families. Millions of kids grow up with a single parent. Violence, ghettos, obesity and hopelessness prevail. In California, Latino gangs dominate Los Angeles neighborhoods as schools ‘house’ students before ‘graduating’ them to the streets, unable to read or write. Millions of unwed teens bring babies into the world with no hope of supporting them other than taxpayer welfare. In Detroit, Michigan, according to NBC anchor Brian Williams, high school dropout rates last year hit 76 percent.

Result: a horrific 32.2 million Americans subsist on food stamps! You must work to get your hands around that number! In America? How? Why?

Today, the same U.S. Congress that perpetrated our massive transmutation into a multicultural society, ponders the appointment of Latino Judge Sonia Sotomayor. By her own admission, she represents ‘affirmative action quotas’ into law school and appointments. She most likely will become an ‘affirmative action’ Supreme Court judge. Yet, when minorities scream at anyone making even the slightest racist statement, she said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male that hasn’t lived that life.”

Americans will find themselves in new conditions as this new legal, multicultural experiment manifests in the coming years. However, it does not portend well for anyone no matter what their race. In a speech in Washington DC, former Colorado Governor Lamm said, “If you believe that America is too smug, too self-satisfied, too rich, then let’s destroy America. It is not that hard to do. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall, and that, “An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.”

“Here is how they destroyed their countries,” Lamm said. “First, turn America into a bilingual or multi-lingual and bi-cultural country. History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual. The historical scholar Seymour Lipset put it this way, “The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension and tragedy. Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon, Holland, Great Britain—all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with Basques, Bretons and Corsicans.”

Finally, with America adding 70 million more immigrants within the next 26 years, I see ramifications that explode beyond our current predicament best summed up by Dr. Otis Graham, “Most Western elites continue urging the wealthy West not to stem the migrant tide, but to absorb our global brothers and sisters until their horrid ordeal has been endured and shared by all--ten billion humans packed onto an ecologically devastated planet.”

Like a chemistry experiment where unknowing students pour a bouquet of chemicals into a beaker, no one knows what kind of an explosion will occur, but they ‘feel’ something regrettable happening.

At this moment, the British, Dutch and French that will become minorities in their own countries by mid century, may be asking themselves why they did the same things as America.

And the American people, unlike the American Indians, did it to themselves. America will never be the same; never get better. Payback, as they say, is a *itch!

Frosty Wooldridge, math/science teacher, has bicycled across six continents – from the Arctic to the South Pole – as well as six times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. He presents “The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it” to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges. He works to bring about sensible world population balance at www.frostywooldridge.com

Speaking alongside Russian-born skater Tatiana Borodulina in Sydney this morning, Senator Evans said changes to the rules meant Borodulina would be eligible to compete for Australia at next year's Winter Olympics in Canada.

While Borodulina has been representing Australia at World Cup level, citizenship is required for the Olympics.

The proposed amendments - to be introduced into Federal Parliament next month - will reduce the residency requirements from four years to two for athletes of 'distinguished sporting talent'.

"This is a quirk caused by the change in 2007 that basically meant an Olympian transferring or coming to this country couldn't compete at the next Olympics," Senator Evans said.

"That's clearly not in our interests and it's not fair on the athletes."

Senator Evans says there was a record influx of more than 600,000 temporary residents over the past year, mainly foreign students and working holiday visa holders.

"Our permanent numbers are down a little bit as a result of us cutting the intake in order to cope with the economic crisis, but there's a lot of people coming through Australia for work, holiday, and study," he said.

He says that while he is not looking at a clampdown, Australia needs to understand what impact the temporary residents have.

"We've got to have a much better longer term planning framework and work with the states to assess the impacts on the cities and other resources."

As one poster at the ABC site commented:

"This shouldn't be lauded as a 'step forward for athletes'. It's a SLAP IN THE FACE for every Aussie kid practicing their sport in the hope of one day representing their country."

Aussie kids? Who cares about them? Certainly not the Immigration Minister. Chris Evans and the Rudd Government are already forcing Aussie kids to compete with a myriad Third World immigrants for access to career and educational opportunities, housing, public services, as well as the chance to represent their country in sport at an international level. But then again, at the rapid rate at which immigration is transforming Australia into a colony of the Third World, Aussie kids won't have a country left to represent for much longer, at least not a country that they'll be able to recognise as their own.

"We've got to have a much better longer term planning framework and work with the states to assess the impacts on the cities and other resources."

Gee, Chris, why didn't you think of that before you opened the immigration floodgates?

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Below are excerpts taken from chapters 7 and 8 of Mark O'Connor's 1998 book This Tired Brown Land. In these chapters, O'Connor exposes the fallacious economic arguments used to justify high immigration and reveals the real economic costs of immigration.

On the claim that immigration is a great boon for the economy:

The immigration lobby argues that since migrants create a 'demand' for goods and services, they benefit the economy. As one commentator remarked, if things were as simple as that, we could do the economy a power of good by burning down our suburbs at regular intervals. Unfortunately, much of the 'demand' created has been of the sort that sucks in imports rather than generates export industries. The years of high immigration in the late 1980s were plagued by current account problems.

The battle between nations today is to create exports, or import-replacements, not to stimulate internal demand. In a sense we are locked in a friendly but fierce trade war in which our assets are the things we can export (or can do without, or can produce at home) and our liabilities are the imports our population demands.

After years of boosterism by the [former] BIR [Bureau of Immigration Research], the BIR's Lyn Williams finally summed up its research and conceded that the economic advantages of immigration were at best minimal or possibly neutral. Hardly the sort of economic bonanza you'd risk ruining your country for!

***

... boomers often justify high immigration on the grounds that it 'stimulates' the economy. The Sydney Institute, for instance, is a privately funded 'think tank' which is strongly immigrationist. In one guest article in The Canberra Times Anne Henderson, Deputy Director of the Institute, suggested that those who can't see the benefits of higher immigration are irrational Hansonists. By contrast, she tells you, "The rational mind know [that] added numbers of people in a country create jobs in the housing and retail markets, and so on. ... Australia's state premiers (Bob Carr is an exception) are on to this. ...They want immigrant numbers based on population needs (read economic needs) not ad hoc political decisions (read populist prejudice). ...The tide could be turning. Growth in Australia needs people. Industry leaders such as Tony Berg, at Boral, agree. ...National interest in the benefits of immigration in Australia could be making a comeback." Henderson spends half her article 'poisoning the wells' by talking about 'racism'. Replying, in a letter to the editor, the Canberra environmentalist Colin Samundsett remarked "Anne Henderson rides a Trojan Horse constructed out of race to assail her target of having our immigration increased. While wearing the cloak of scholarship woven by the Sydney Institute, in this instance she is attired more like Lady Govina. ...This latest text seems to be a political handout rather than a seriously assembled critique for Australia."

Anne Henderson is only one of many who confuse an increase in 'demand' or in GDP with a better quality of life. In fact, unless a per capita growth in GDP (or better, in real quality of living) can be demonstrated, most individual Australians do not benefit at all financially. In other words, whether we are talking jobs or pay or wealth, few us of benefit from a slightly bigger cake if there are far more people than before to divide the cake up among. This fundamental truth, pointed out repeatedly in the [former] Coalition government's own Mortimer Report, Going for Growth, has been hidden from the Australian people in a propaganda effort supported by sections of the media and by both the major political parties.

On the costs of immigration:

According to Swinburne University's Katherine Betts, the likely negative effects of immigration include:

* Adverse effects on the balance of payments.* The diversification of resources to infrastructure.* Diseconomies of scale in the cities that have passed their optimal size (considered to be around 500,000 people).* Waste of human resources by the neglect of local training.* Pressures toward capital widening at the expense of capital deepening. (We can ill afford to be a nation that invests mainly in real estate.)

The last point is most important. On average, in all big and small businesses in Australia in 1995, it took about $117,000 of capital to provide one job. This means that billions of dollars of additional capital will be required to get our unemployed into the workforce. As we have no surplus savings in Australia, the capital for new jobs will have to be borrowed from overseas, thus further worsening our balance of payments.

In 1989 Stephen Joske, an economist with the Parliamentary Research Library, estimated that immigration had produced a $7-$8 billion shortfall in investment capital (at then-current immigration levels) for public infrastructure. In other words, the amount of money, which might otherwise have been used to improve existing infrastructure (e.g. schools, public transport) had gone instead into providing basic infrastructure (e.g. roads, sewerage) for immigrants. Joske calculated that the necessary capital investment was some $80,000 (in 1989 dollars) per immigrant. Some of this money the migrants bring with them, but most of it must come either from within Australia or from overseas borrowings. Either way this increases Australia's foreign debt and foreign liabilities. This also puts pressure on interest rates by causing Australia to be seen as a less attractive or riskier borrower, and thus impacts negatively on many sections of the economy.

Properly controlled experiments are rare in economics; but Colin Teese, former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Trade, has pointed out that First World countries over the past forty years have in effect carried out one: a control experiment on the effects of population growth on per capita wealth. The four countries that deliberately sought to increase their populations through immigration - Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S. - all slipped backward badly relative to the rest. A likely reason, Teese suggests, is that too much of these countries' investment has gone into housing, services, and speculative real estate buying (because immigration produces continually rising real estate prices) rather than into capital-intensive production to produce exports and replace imports.

***

In 1996 Oliver Howes revealed in the Canberra Times that the BIR had published, but had failed to publicise the crucial conclusions of two 1992 books which itemised the costs of immigration to federal and state budgets. Despite the expense of these major studies, the BIR (which had never been accused of lack of diligence in publicising research that could justify high immigration) failed to add up the costs itemised in these books and thus show the total average cost per migrant - a figure one might have thought of some interest to taxpayers and government. In particular, the BIR failed to adequately publicise the implications of the study Immigration and State Budgets by Professor Russell Mathews, which painstakingly calculated and disaggregated the various immigration costs to the taxpayer in the average migrant's first five years. When his itemised per capita costs are added up they come to around $16,762 per migrant at state level. When one adds to this the figure of $8,962 at federal level (provided by the other BIR study), the result would seem to be a total cost of $25,724 per immigrant at State and Federal levels combined. Costs at local government (never properly established) may be relatively minor, but an overall cost of $26,000 per immigrant can be considered conservative. The BIR failed to publicise either the total state costs figure or the combined state plus federal figure. It was only some years later that Oliver Howes did this calculation and published the results in the Canberra Times.

The situation then turned out to be even worse. The BIR had failed to ensure the two studies were compatible. In counting all the monies that migrants contribute to state government budgets, Professor Matthews had meticulously included a per capita share of Commonwealth Funding Grants to the States. (These are essentially a return to the states of a share of the income tax which the federal government collects.) But the authors of the study of costs and benefits at federal level had failed to count these payments as a deduction from the federal budget. When adjustment is made for this inconsistency, the per capita cost per migrant turns out to be $34,500.

***

The former BIR conceded that there might be long-term environmental and economic costs (especially with balance of payments) caused by immigration-fed population growth, but it denied that state or federal governments could reap budgetary benefits by cutting immigration. This seems to be completely wrong. Mathews' figures (available to the BIR since 1992, yet oddly neglected by them) leave no doubt that reducing immigration would provide large savings in both the short and medium term to both state and federal budgets. His figures also leave little doubt that to use immigration as, in effect, a form of 'industry subsidy' cannot be defended as being in the public interest.

On the alleged economic benefits of a larger population:

Some have claimed that a larger population is better for the economy. In an 'Occasional Monograph' (May 1993) titled Ten of the Most Dangerous Myths in Australia Phil Ruthven, chairman of Ibis Business Information, commented: "Rubbish! Twelve of the Top 20 standard of living countries have lower population levels than Australia; and Australia once had the world's highest standing of living with four million people."

On immigration, wages and jobs:

Despite the prevalence at its public conferences of people claiming that "immigrants create jobs", even the Bureau of Immigration Research did not normally claim this. Its formal papers usually argued simply that the economy would adjust to an increased workforce. Wages would fall (an assumption that was tactfully not emphasised) and this would enable employers to put on more staff.

The BIR's final word was in an in-house publication by Lyn Williams, already referred to. After turning the evidence this way and that she concluded the effects of immigration upon the economy and unemployment are close to neutral (or, as the pseudo-medical jargon of economists puts it, "benign"). Even the distinctly slanted fact-sheets provided by the Department of Immigration merely claim that "Research over recent years shows that immigration does not have an adverse effect on the overall unemployment rate" and "The consistent result of research is that immigration does not adversely impact on thhe aggregate unemployment rate."

The last claim, as we shall shortly see, is untrue. It seems unwise for the present Department of Immigration to lean so heavily on the authority of the former BIR, an organisation which awkwardly combined public relations and research functions. As sociologist and immigration expert Katherine Betts puts it, the BIR commonly assumed that adding to the labour force, even in a time of unemployment, would produce a fall in wages that would lead to more jobs being created and thus to no long-term increase in the percentage of the population unemployed. This logic, she points out, ignored both the long-term disappearance of demand for manual labour (important because so many immigrants seek manual work) and the 'stickiness' of wages which (because of factors like unions and wage agreements) do not automatically fall according to the law of supply and demand.

***

It is claimed that more people (whether immigrants or native-born babies) create 'demand'. But do they create a job's worth of demand each? Perhaps only if their demands become more 'frivolous'. Otherwise economies of scale will mean there is less work to be done. Consider, for instance, how much work it would be in an isolated community of just 1,000 people to provide shoes, boots, sandshoes, sandals and slippers in all the styles and sizes that different men, women and children would require. No wonder that craftnames like Shoemaker, Carpenter, and Taylor were numerous in early communities. A significant proportion of the population would have to be in the footwear trades alone, even with modern technology. But if we scale that population up to 100 million, then only a small proportion of it would need to make shoes. Increasing the population does not necessarily increase jobs at the same rate.

The econometrician Matthew W. Peter has disproved the boomer's claim that for every job an immigrant takes another job is created for the existing population. He showed that this was based on a mis-use of the Orani computer model of the economy. When more fact-based assumptions were fed in, for instance that wages are 'sticky', the same Orani model gave the opposite conclusions: that bringing in immigrants does cause unemployment, as well as problems with balance of payments, and a string of other undesirable effects. Unfortunately, disinterested academics like Mathew Peter did not have the public relations expertise of the BIR, and the BIR's unreliable claims continue to be repeated as gospel by some defenders of existing levels of immigration, and in the media.

A further problem is that many of the jobs migrants do create are unproductive. We pay a fortune for consultants and teachers to ameliorate the linguistic and other problems of immigrants; but only from the perspective of those so employed are these problems a boon. For the taxpayer they are a drain and an expense.*

The Melbourne pyschologist and author Valery Yule has commented: "The jobs immigrants create are mainly ones which are profitable to builders and developers: raising the price of land, requiring more housing, resulting in more medium-density housing replacing our world-famous 'quarter-acre-blocks' and wrecking in Melbourne all hope of a Garden City. Requiring more schools, hospitals etc. is not a bonus because they have to paid for from the public purse. Immigration as a source of job creation is a non-ending job creator - it has to keep running to keep creating, and it puts more pressure on our resources. The way things are today, the more immigrants we take, the more imports we tend to buy, and the greater our foreign debt."

***

Apart from failing to recognise that wages are 'sticky', the BIR's calculations also ignored the fact that the unemployment problems created by immigration are not spread evenly across the spectrum of occupations (which would make them easier to solve). For instance, immigrants help provide a great surplus of skills in areas like engineering and sewing. This does not only lead to massive and expensive unemployment (and disillusion) among recent immigrants, it also threatens the employment and salary prospects of anyone currently employed in these professions. (For some years in the 1980s we were actually importing more engineers than we were graduating.)

***

William Mitchell, Head of Economics at the University of Newcastle, has recently raised a more technical objection. He points out that the claim made by many immigration lobbyists that immigration doesn't cause unemployment "completely ignores the question of whether the growth needed to absorb the higher population is sustainable, given the problems Australia has with external debt."

Indeed, he points out that the claim is based on logically incompatible premises: "Unemployment is affected by two factors: increases in the productivity of labour and increases in its supply. Both of these factors could, in principle, be offset by strong economic growth. But, if the economy grows fast enough to accommodate both productivity gains and the addition of migrants to the labour force, it will draw in more imports and the balance of payments will deteriorate. Economic growth of around 2% per annum may be all that we can sustain without increasing our foreign debt. This level of economic growth is not enough to reduce unemployment in the face of any net immigration (or any growth in labour productivity)."

On immigration and socio-economic inequality:

...unemployment is not the only way in which population growth penalises those most vulnerable. As the Sydney University economist Frank Stilwell points out "Economic inequality is fuelled by urban growth, because the inflation in the urban property market benefits existing wealth holders at the expense of new entrants. It also intensifies the fiscal crisis of the state because of the costs of infrastructure - providing the water and sewerage systems, the energy supply networks and so forth. The costs of such infrastructure tend to rise more rapidly than the capacity to fund them through taxation or user charges."

Thus as population grows, whether by immigration or by natural increase, the poor cop it in a variety of ways. Stagnant wages, higher home costs and mortages, less certainty of keeping their jobs (and less chance of changing or choosing where they work). And as government budgets collapse, the social security net is ripped, or unravels.

* Economist Stephen Rimmer noted in 1992, "The lack of English language skills in the workplace imposes substantial economic costs in the form of lost productivity and reduced international competitiveness. For example, in 1989 the OMA estimated the poor English language skills cost Australia A$3.2 billion each year in additional communication time needed in the workplace. This estimate was used to justify more government spending on English language training. In addition, it was claimed in a report published by the Federal government-funded Bureau of Immigration Research that lost output owing to unemployment caused by lack of English language skills could be as high as A$1.6 billion per year. ...In all, the lack of English language skills in the workplace could cost Australia over A$5.4 billion per year - equal to 1.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)." Source: Rimmer, S., "The Cost of Multiculturalism", The Social Contract, Volume 3, Number 1 (Fall 1992).

Monday, August 24, 2009

Latest statistics show that Australia’s population is growing at a rate of more than a million every three years. This growth rate is being driven primarily by record rates of immigration and a relative young population, itself a product of rapid past immigration. Doubtless Peter Costello’s baby bonus has also made the situation worse by encouraging the increased fertility rates of Australian women.

At the present rate Australia will have a population of about 50 million by mid century and 100 million by the end of the century. If this sounds implausible, consider that at the end of World War II, just 64 years ago, Australia’s population was only 7.5 million, i.e. it has almost tripled in that time.

This population growth should be considered an economic and environmental problem of huge proportions. From the economic point of view, Australia relies mostly on mining and agriculture for its export earnings. These industries require a very small proportion of the population to operate (although it is true that due to inadequate training in the technical trades and engineering, they have suffered a temporary labour shortages in recent years).

The growing population in Australia will not increase exports of iron ore, coal or gold and will reduce our exports of food as we are forced to consume more of our output internally. The money that comes to Australia from the sales of our resources presently gets divided among 22 million Australians. When the population doubles the amount per capita will halve.

There are plenty of examples around the world where resource based economies, almost all of which do not rely on a large fraction of their population to produce the export income, are worse off with large populations. Compare the UK with Norway, both supposedly rich from North Sea oil. The UK, with a population of about 60 million, spent the income and will soon run out of oil. Norway, with less than five million people, could afford to save a huge proportion of its income in large government investment funds. Norway’s future is assured.

During the recent resources boom, Australian governments squandered the bulk of the tax revenues generated by the mining companies, at least partially, in building infrastructure for an unnecessary population explosion. As an example of this problem, consider the state of Queensland’s finances which are caught between falling resources income and the staggering costs of providing the infrastructure for a third-world rate of population growth.

In the post war period of immigration there were some sound reasons to expand Australia’s population. There was a genuine, if exaggerated, security concern which was a rational response to the near death experience that Australia encountered in World War II. There was also a concerted effort to expand Australia’s manufacturing industry which, it was argued, needed a larger population to make it viable. In the days of poor transport, we needed large internal markets.

All those factors have now changed. Manufacturing in Australia is on its knees and a growing population will not help. Mining, agriculture, tourism, and the education of foreign students are our biggest export earners and do not need a growing population.

From the environmental side, a growing population is an obvious problem. Currently we have water shortages of varying severity in all our big cities which would have been less acute if we had maintained our population at levels of 20 years ago. Melbourne would not have to contemplate encroaching into its green fringe or building a desalination plant if its population wasn’t growing. Finally, if you believe that C02 causes climate change, Australia’s population growth will make it almost impossible to achieve meaningful emission reductions. We have to reduce per-capita emissions by 50 per cent every 40 years just to keep our total emission at present levels.

Even though the problems of population growth are obvious, it is a political sacred cow that cannot be argued or debated. None of the major political parties will argue for lower immigration because they are scared of being labeled racist. Even the Greens who have a useful population policy are almost always silent on this issue. They should be arguing for lower immigration every time the Australian Bureau of Statistics population figures are released. There is also an unholy alliance between the right wing who want a growing population to feed our housing construction industry and the extreme left who want to allow the whole world to come to Australia on compassionate grounds.

The housing industry is the main beneficiary of high population growth. Every year we have to build a city the size of Canberra just to house our growth. Unfortunately this is not a productive activity, unlike building a factory, a mine, the scientific development of better farming practice, a medical breakthrough or an environmental improvement. House construction appears to be good for us because it employs people in the short term, but in the long run it will get us nowhere because it is not an investment in production. The reality is that Australia has too many people in the industry.

Although the housing industry has always been a big winner from our population policy, there is now another big player that has its snout in the immigration trough. That is our education sector. Presently, applicants who wish to migrate to Australia and have a qualification from an Australian institution get preferential treatment. This has spawned a massive industry in education which could only be described as an enormous immigration scam. In the lobby of a large Pitt Street building recently I noted that half the companies in the building were involved in either immigration advice, or education for foreign students. Many companies were doing both.

It is not only some dodgy colleges which are involved in this cash-for-visa scam. Our universities take in large numbers of students whose main aim is to gain Australian residency. We are prepared to take money from them to smooth their way through the process. Effectively selling permanent residency visas through the education system is neither ethical nor in the best interests of the country.

The population issue is an example of where this country has lost its way and is not concentrating on the big economic, environmental or social issues. We are preoccupied with global warming and the supposed imminent demise of the Great Barrier Reef even though the science on these is far from conclusive. At the same time we ignore the obvious and definite environmental problems posed by population growth: unarguably the easiest and cheapest problem to solve yet underpinning all our environmental problems.

We also refuse to contemplate nuclear power to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because, like population growth, this is another sacred cow that cannot be challenged. Economically we are prepared to sacrifice our future for the short term gain of extra foreign students in our universities and dodgy colleges, and for jobs in our non productive building industry. Socially we are not prepared to pay to train our own kids to become doctors, engineers and trades people to fill the gaps we have in our labour force. At the same time we are happy to take skilled people from developing countries which cannot afford to lose them.

With Canada and perhaps Russia, Australia is in a unique position. We have a small population and a huge country, most of which is agriculturally unproductive and unpleasant to live in. We have a relatively unspoilt environment and an abundance of mineral wealth. We also have a technologically advanced society and a good base in science and medicine. Uncontrolled population growth risks what we have. We should immediately reduce immigration to about 50,000 a year, with the medium term objective of having a zero net immigration policy; and the baby bonus should be scrapped to discourage the present rise in fertility. Because of the pipeline effect, i.e. we have a very young average population, our population will continue to grow to at least 25 million. We can then decide if we wanted to keep the population at that level or reduce it by adjusting immigration to suit.

It really is that easy.

Peter Ridd is a Reader in Physics at James Cook University specialising in Marine Physics. He is also a scientific adviser to the Australian Environment Foundation. He writes this article as an advisor to the Australian Environment Foundation.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

ATTACKS on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney may have been only the beginning of the social conflict to be played out as thousands of foreign students stay on with full work rights and compete for jobs and housing, researcher Bob Birrell warns.

"We're just on the threshold of dealing with all the social, immigration and other issues that arise from allowing this juggernaut (the overseas student industry) to go unchecked," said Monash University's Dr Birrell, who is an influential critic of the degrees-for-visas market.

In the latest People and Place journal, he said the federal government had made it much harder for foreigners who emerged from Australian universities and colleges with poor English and no work experience to win visas as skilled migrants.

Many ex-students given these visas in the past had not secured the jobs they were supposedly trained for, leaving Australia with skill shortages.

But Dr Birrell said news of the visa crackdown was taking a while to move through the "recruitment grapevine" and the government had sent a mixed message by allowing about 40,000 former overseas students with little chance of winning permanent residency to stay on temporary or bridging visas with full work rights.

These ex-students would be ripe for exploitation.

"Employers in the hospitality industry will be able to take their pick of the thousands of former students desperate for such work where this is associated with a promise of an employer nomination for a permanent visa," Dr Birrell said.

Indian students had come under attack as enrolments boomed, pushing them into less affluent suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne where they competed for jobs and housing with youth from low-skill migrant backgrounds, Dr Birrell said.

"This has created a powder keg situation as the newcomers find themselves soft targets for youth gangs," he said.

Dr Birrell said it could take a few years to defuse the situation because many students were yet to graduate, thanks to a dramatic growth in numbers leading up to a tightening of the skilled migration rules.

From 2005 to 2008, a qualification in cookery or hairdressing "virtually guaranteed" a permanent residency visa, leading to a massive growth in enrolments, especially of Indian students attending private colleges, he said.

He predicted legal conflict, as ex-students turned to the courts to secure the permanent residency status they had enrolled for. "It is unlikely they will leave Australia without a fight," Dr Birrell said.

The U.K. government is planning to review its immigration policies, in a move likely to make it more difficult for foreigners to become British citizens. The move comes as unemployment is now at a 12-year high and as concerns about terrorism have fueled a surge in protectionist sentiment in the U.K., long one of the world's most open countries. Once-marginal anti-immigration politicians have been gaining ground.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson plant to announce a points system ('PBS') will be modeled after one in use in Australia and introduced last year, that grades workers and students hoping to enter the U.K. on criteria including education, age and need for their skills. Immigration minister Phil Woolas said the scheme would stop the population reaching the 70 million predicted by Whitehall statisticians and bring "control" to the migration system. The number of passports handed out to migrants is on course to hit a record of almost 220,000 this year. Critics in UK say the recent increases to their population, through heavy immigration, are placing a huge burden on public services as hospitals and schools face increased demand but no increases in their budgets.

Traditionally, foreign workers boost both the economies of the countries they work in as well as their home countries. But studies say that the current global economic crisis has sapped much of such cross-border monetary exchanges. The short-term benefits of growth are evident, but the long-term implications are severe.

Other European countries are clamping down on immigration as their economies slow and citizens complain that too many people are being allowed in.

In future migrants to the UK would have to spend five years as temporary residents, before becoming "probationary citizens". Points could also be deducted and citizenship either delayed or withheld for those found breaking the law or engaging in anti-social behaviour.

With record immigration levels to Australia, and so-called "skills shortages" in areas such as hair-dressing and cooks, this system hasn't reduced the number of foreigners entering Australia! Citizenship to Australia is extremely easy to aquire. The "skills shortages" hasn't translated into full employment or increased training courses. HECS and loans are escalating costs for university and now TAFE loans in Victoria and more Australians trying to aquire skills will become casualties of excessive fees.

Assisted by higher birth rates and heightened net overseas migration, Australia added a record 406,000 residents last year. The previous record was 375,000 in the year to June 2007. Bernard Salt: Clusters of growth excite property developers and concern planners. They localise demand for property and intensify demand for infrastructure. Our growth is determined by the property market!

Political lifecyles last until the next election. Australia must try to survive, intact, until at least the next generation and remain "sustainable" after that!

It’s time Australia cut immigration, apart from genuine refugees. Anti-immigration is not racism! It is about having an optimum population plan, a sustainable limit to how our environment, society and economy can equitably cope with the projected number of people.

John Howards "go for growth" mentality, and that record numbers of births implies confidence in the economy, still hasn't been re-evaluated. Developing countries have high birth rates too, to ensure an income in old age!

The points based system is trivial and has done little to reduce our immigration numbers, and legally discriminates against genuine refugees.